I’m embarrassed to post again publicly with the same issue I have in the past but I just can’t get my alkalinity figured out....
it’s funny, my dad literally had a PhD in chemistry and I’m still too dumb to figure this out.. maybe i was adopted.
Don’t judge!
So my alkalinity is currently at 4.9 (I have two Hanna checkers that agree and two bottles of reactant and my water change water registers correctly around 8 or 9 usually)... My calcium measured by salifert must be over 500 because it never changes color for me unless I fill syringe again.... My ph swings from 8.2 to 8.52 daily per my Seneye....
I’m currently dosing 2 teaspoons of kalkwasser per gallon in my top off water which utilizes about 2/3 a gallon a day... I also add around 8 ml of white vinegar per gallon to the top off water because my ph creeps over 8.5 if I don’t....
i also have two dosing pumps dosing Red Sea two part....
So I made the mistake of assuming they were equal, but in reality I should have been dosing a 3:1 ratio... which mostly likely is what caused a huge precipitation issue that covered my glass... But I did a 33% water change scraped the glass and the alkalinity was back up to 7.... I then started dosing at the correct 3:1 ratio and it slowly dropped over the week (even though I kept increasing the dose) to 5.2.... I had only been testing alkalinity and then when I tetsted the calcium and saw it was literally off the chart I stopped dosing it all together but kept the dosing pump on for alkalinity.... 24 hours later it dropped again... to the current 4.9.... Now what???
it’s funny, my dad literally had a PhD in chemistry and I’m still too dumb to figure this out.. maybe i was adopted.
Don’t judge!
So my alkalinity is currently at 4.9 (I have two Hanna checkers that agree and two bottles of reactant and my water change water registers correctly around 8 or 9 usually)... My calcium measured by salifert must be over 500 because it never changes color for me unless I fill syringe again.... My ph swings from 8.2 to 8.52 daily per my Seneye....
I’m currently dosing 2 teaspoons of kalkwasser per gallon in my top off water which utilizes about 2/3 a gallon a day... I also add around 8 ml of white vinegar per gallon to the top off water because my ph creeps over 8.5 if I don’t....
i also have two dosing pumps dosing Red Sea two part....
So I made the mistake of assuming they were equal, but in reality I should have been dosing a 3:1 ratio... which mostly likely is what caused a huge precipitation issue that covered my glass... But I did a 33% water change scraped the glass and the alkalinity was back up to 7.... I then started dosing at the correct 3:1 ratio and it slowly dropped over the week (even though I kept increasing the dose) to 5.2.... I had only been testing alkalinity and then when I tetsted the calcium and saw it was literally off the chart I stopped dosing it all together but kept the dosing pump on for alkalinity.... 24 hours later it dropped again... to the current 4.9.... Now what???